Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
Book Review The Call of Grace: How the Covenant Illuminates Salvation & Evangelism by Norman Shepherd The Call of Grace is an excellent manual to put in the hands of laymen to teach them how to rest in God’s grace while taking seriously the prize of the upward call of…
My Role as a Parent in My Children’s Salvation Evangeline Jael Horne is our third child. My two boys were born while we were at seminary and we had the privilege of giving them to Jeff Meyers, our pastor at that time, for baptism. When Evangeline was born, however, I…
John Calvin writes in the Institutes about the possibility of admitting children to the Lord’s Supper by virtue of their baptism once and only once: At length they object, that there is not greater reason for admitting infants to baptism than to the Lord’s Supper, to which, however, they are…
The debate over paedocommunion does not seem to have made much headway on either side in recent years. Certainly both sides have made a solid effort to argue for their position. But no resolution seems to be forthcoming in the near future. As a convinced paedocommunionist, I find the church’s…
Lots of conservative Protestants want to answer “no” to this question. The problem with this position is that conservative Protestants are bound to believe what the Bible teaches. And the Bible says inconvenient things, like “baptism now saves you” (1 Peter 3.21), or “all of you who were baptized into…
This paper is something of a follow-up to my earlier study, “ Baptismal Efficacy and the Reformed Tradition: Past, Present, and Future .” One of the more controversial aspects of that paper was my claim that Calvin held to a very high view of baptismal efficacy. Indeed, he was a…
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Gentiles contributed materials to every sanctuary in the Bible. But the character of their contributions changes. Tracing the changes displays the trajectory of redemptive history. Pharaoh contributes to the tabernacle unwillingly. Pummeled by plagues, he lets Israel go, and as they go they “plunder Egypt.” Call Pharaoh an “involuntary supplier.”…
In his Spirit of Protestantism , Robert McAfee Brown argues that catholicity was a major concern of the Reformation. From the viewpoint of the Reformers, “medieval Christendom had surrendered the notion of catholicity to a limited and distorted understanding of the Christian faith. And the Reformers, in trying to recapture…
B ruce Wilson quoted me at the Huffington Post Blog the other day. To be precise, he quoted Evangelical activist (not, as Wilson says, pastor ) David Lane quoting me, without attributing the quote to me. That’s OK by me. I don’t mind not being quoted in an article with…
You’d think we were living in Jericho, what with all the talk of walls falling down. The Berlin wall is down. Europe has no more borders. Technology ignores the political map of the world. Not to mention all the conceptual boundaries that are being breached. And that’s a good thing,…
In his forthcoming translation of The Writings, Strong As Death Is Love , Robert Alter argues that the writings are late. We know this because of the type of Hebrew that these books use: “Biblical Hebrew, like any language, changed through time. The temporal distance between the sundry strands of…
It’s an old saw, but is it possible to read Augustine’s description of the corruptions of the Roman Republic ( City of God , Book 2) without a wince (or a wink) of recognition? “Only let it remain undefeated, they say, only let it nourish and abound in resources; let…
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